turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair—my hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your father’s tantrum turned

into heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart

there are two headless people building a burning house.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.

Always another hour to kill—only to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,

the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we’ve traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue

It’s more like the sound

a doe makes
when the arrowhead
replaces the day
with an answer to the rib’s
hollowed hum. We saw it coming
but kept walking through the hole
in the garden. Because the leaves
were bright green & the fire
only a pink brushstroke
in the distance. It’s not
about the light—but how dark
it makes you depending
on where you stand.
Depending on where you stand
his name can appear like moonlight
shredded in a dead dog’s fur.
His name changed when touched
by gravity. Gravity breaking
our kneecaps just to show us
the sky. We kept saying Yes—
even with all those birds.
Who would believe us
now? My voice cracking
like bones inside the radio.
Silly me. I thought love was real
& the body imaginary.
But here we are—standing
in the cold field, him calling
for the girl. The girl
beside him. Frosted grass
snapping beneath her hooves.

Behind the wooden fence, a field lit

with summer, a man pressing a shank

to another man’s throat. Steel turning to light

on sweat-slick neck. Forgive me

for not calling Your name. For thinking:

this must be how every prayer

begins—the word Please cleaving

the wind into fragments, into what

a boy hears in his need to know

how pain blesses the body back

to its sinner. The hour suddenly

stilled. The man genuflected, his lips

pressed to black boot as the words spilled

from his mouth like rosaries

shattering from too much

Father. Am I wrong to love

those eyes, to see something so clear

and blue—beg to remain

clear and blue? Did my cheek twitch

when that darkness bloomed from his crotch

and trickled into ochre dirt? Father,

how quickly the blade becomes

You. But let me begin again: There’s a boy

kneeling in a house with every door kicked open

to summer. There’s a question corroding

his tongue. There’s a knife touching

Your name lodged inside the throat.

Dearest Father, what becomes of the boy

no longer a boy? Please—

what becomes of the shepherd

when the sheep are cannibals?

After immigrating to America at age two, Vuong was raised in Harford, Connecticut and received his Bachelors of Arts from the City University of New York. Where he achieved the honors of the Academy of American Poets college prize. Later, Vuong was awarded a Masters of Fine Arts from New York University. His poetry focuses on themes of desire, transformation, and violent loss as seen in his critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds. This collection was recognized as one of the New York Times Top 10 books of 2016 with high praise from critics. Other awards for this collection were the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for best first collection. Ocean Vuong has also received other high achievements such as being acclaimed into Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers alongside Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau, and many more. Today, Ocean Vuong works at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst as an assistant professor for the MFA program for Poets and Writers. The release for Vuong’s debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous that has already received high praise from critics is on for public release on June 5th.